“The obvious answer is that it teaches us what you’re interested in. The less-obvious, but equally true, answer is that it teaches you what you’re interested in. If we merely asked what you wanted, without measuring what you wanted, you’d just keep lying to us – and to yourself. … Ask audiences what they want, and they’ll tell you vegetables. Watch them quietly, and they’ll mostly eat candy.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Australia’s Cinematic Dystopias Are Not Like Other Nations’ Cinematic Dystopias
“When Americans make films about a world in which the only law is the gun, they tend towards the romantic – for example, almost every western … Everybody else’s dystopias, from The Matrix to 1984, are those in which the powers that be are all-pervasive. Our dystopias are those in which they cannot or will not help us.”
George Takei Is Now Everybody’s Favorite Wisecracking Activist
“Like Betty White, Mr. Takei has used naughty-oldster humor to fuel a late-career surge. But his ribaldry is often in the service of social causes, whether gay rights or Japanese-American visibility.”
Daniel Keyes, 86, Author Of ‘Flowers For Algernon’
Having won awards in both short story and novel form, “Flowers for Algernon went on to sell more than five million copies and to become a staple of English classes. It inspired television adaptations, one of which also starred [Cliff] Robertson” – who won an Oscar for the film version, titled Charley – “and stage productions, including a musical and a play in Korean.”
Using Improv To Prevent Rape
“Something you don’t hear too often in the middle of an improv set: ‘Okay, and for the next scene, my opening line will be ‘I really didn’t rape that girl’.’ That’s the moment when Sex Signals, one of the country’s fastest growing sexual assault prevention programs, stops being so funny.”
Why The CIA Distributed Pocket-Sized Copies Of ‘Doctor Zhivago’ In The USSR
“Pasternak did not think of his novel as a weapon for intellectual warfare. … He wanted [it] treated as a novel, not a pamphlet. The CIA, on the other hand, was delighted by the media spotlight on the anti-Communist passages. The CIA also recognized that the symbolism of the situation made the Soviet Union look at least as bad as the novel itself did.
Turning Andy Warhol’s Whiteface Drag Polaroids Into A Voguing Ballet
How artist Raja Feather Kelly created Andy Warhol’s DRELLA (I Love You Faye Driscoll). (includes video)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.17.14
What’s Left Unsaid About the Delaware Deaccession
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-06-18
Come down from the mountain
AJBlog: Sandow | Published 2014-06-18
How Western Opera Came to China
AJBlog: The Great Flourishing | Published 2014-06-18
From Ashes to True Love
AJBlog: Dancebeat | Published 2014-06-17
Taking Stock of the Ojai Music Festival
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-06-17
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A Hollywood Film About Rape Culture – From 1950
“Outrage is a special artistic achievement. [Ida] Lupino approaches the subject of rape with a wide view of the societal tributaries that it involves. She integrates an inward, deeply compassionate depiction of a woman who is the victim of rape with an incisive view of the many societal failures that contribute to the crime, including legal failure to face the prevalence of rape, and the over-all prudishness and sexual censoriousness that make the crime unspeakable in the literal sense and end up shaming the victim.”
Will #NakedJeffKoons Become The Internet’s Next Hot Meme?
The artist just posed nude for an Annie Leibovitz-Vanity Fair photo spread. “Naturally, the Internet has responded. And the Naked Koons spoofs are already starting to surface – with heady references to the French avant-garde of the early 20th century and Norman Rockwell.”